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Towns - Ever wanted to be the mayor of tristram?

Hello fellow rps dwellers. i am helping develop a management/building simulation game that takes inspiration from various sources, which the main source for is dwarf fortress.

The game sees you as the "mayor" of this little frontier fantasy town, one that just happens to be on top of a dungeon filled with bad monsters.

While you build and expand your town, dig down the earth, mine resources for crafting weapons and fend off monsters or wild beasts, AI heroes with an interest in dungeoning will pass by the town and seek bed and shelter, shops to buy from and a tavern to socialize with other heroes before they venture into the newly dug or the pre existing dungeons that lies beneath the town.

you will not be able to control those heroes, however you could influence their actions by declaring prizes for certain tasks. (basically, giving them quests).

we have a few more planned core feature that i can not reveal right no, as it still in early alpha. right now you can dig, build and expand your town in an isometric world with up to 8 levels of depth filled with monsters and ores but the heroes mechanic are still not finished (so it isnt introduced) however you can already see the potential in the game.

Id be happy if you guys drop by and let me know if you have any opinion, question or critique regarding what you can see and play right now. by the way, the next release will be coming shortly and with it upgraded graphics and mechanics. (you can already see videos of people play testing early stages of that release)

Looks like isometric Dwarf Fortress with a dash of Majesty. Shame the vid's in spanish though, but the visuals explain it well enough. I'm guessing the quests for heroes are paid with whatever you mine? Is there a goal other than see how rich you can get?

Sorry about the vid in spanish, we are looking for someone to make a lets play in english, so if anyone is interested, we would gladly send him a copy of the latest build.

yes, the quests will be paid with whatever you mine or with gold which you could gain from selling crafted items to the heroes or the money they spend in the tavern.

You are right about the Dash of Majesty, however, at the end, majesty felt like an rts, just with a delayed response:

The very core concept of majesty is brilliant, but the fact that every hero looked the same, had almost the same weapons and armour and you basically built whichever type of hero you wanted to have, made it so that the heroes felt more like regular rts units than individual heroes. the flags system basically made it so that the heroes would just hang around the city and go and do things almost only when you put that flag - they had no real purpose other than the one you gave them at a certain moment.

those are things we want to avoid, i cant elaborate on how at the moment because i am not sure i am allowed to. this is also true about the goal, there is a planned "main goal" mechanic, which you could ignore if you want to play it as a sandbox.

Ha! You're doing something rather close to one of my backburner ideas. Neat. The concept is a bit different (you play the role of a world-crafting DM rather than a mayor), but the gameplay would've been somewhat similar. I was thinking SimCity, Majesty, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.

You really need to do something about the interface, and need to do it early. Look at all the things you want the game to do and then design the interface from the ground up to be as clear as possible.
Of course I know that what you have now can only be placeholder, but you really need to give it thought as early in the project as possible. Down the road of nested text menus lies only pain.

I think the monsters should come out of their caves every now and then if there aren't enough heroes battling them, so there's another good reason for the player not to overcharge and drive away all the heroes.

Originally Posted by TillEulenspiegel

Ha! You're doing something rather close to one of my backburner ideas. Neat. The concept is a bit different (you play the role of a world-crafting DM rather than a mayor), but the gameplay would've been somewhat similar. I was thinking SimCity, Majesty, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.

Really looking forward to see how this develops.

Care to share some more information? That already conjures some cool images in my mind.

Hey guys, Alexander Poysky here, from the Towns team. I'm making a note about the UI. So far it's functional but we want to make something really nice. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks following this release we'll be able to implement something that uses images or buttons rather than text. Feel free to shoot me any questions regarding the game"

Ha! You're doing something rather close to one of my backburner ideas. Neat. The concept is a bit different (you play the role of a world-crafting DM rather than a mayor), but the gameplay would've been somewhat similar. I was thinking SimCity, Majesty, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.

Really looking forward to see how this develops.

Your idea sounds very nice. i also had this idea about a multyplayer DM game where one play's the DM and a group of other peoples play the adventurers. would be less of an economic game for the DM but more of a sophisticated story telling engine.
i really hoped minecraft would grow to be that kind of a game actually.

Interface, this is a major concern and we will want to implement the best interface possible (due note that a game with so many options and complexity will also have a complicated interface) that is why we are taking it slowly. however i do research many games, software and websites to see approaches to such problems. being a graphic designer myself, i can tell you that the importance of an interface is not a strange concept to us.

c-row - yes, we really want to convey that the town is sitting a top an "active volcano", meaning it will not be possible to just leave the citizens on the surface and be safe there. organised monsters (goblins and such) will raid the town and siege it, wandering monsters is also a soon to come mechanic.

Your idea sounds very nice. i also had this idea about a multyplayer DM game where one play's the DM and a group of other peoples play the adventurers. would be less of an economic game for the DM but more of a sophisticated story telling engine.

Back in the day I harboured ambitions of hacking Sleep is Death so you could have multiple narrators/players.

I would just like to give you guys a few words of encouragement. It's a great idea for a game and it is looking good. I'm looking forward to playing the finished product one day.

"You go up to a man, and you say, "How are things going, Joe?" and he says, "Oh fine, fine — couldn't be better." And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.